The billionaire owner of the Brooklyn Nets is looking to relocate his basketball team’s Manhattan corporate office to his home country of Russia amid the ongoing political clash between that country and the U.S.

Mikhail Prokhorov, a Barclays Center investor and former Russian presidential and mayoral candidate, said earlier this week that he will transfer ownership of the team to a Russian company, the Brooklyn Paper reported. [more]

New York University, which has received a stormy response from neighborhood residents over the Manhattan expansion plans in Greenwich Village, is all set to expand into Downtown Brooklyn. The university will open the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering at 6 MetroTech Center next month. [more]

Forest City Ratner has signed private high school the Brooklyn Friends School to MetroTech Center, the developer announced today. Brooklyn Friends, a Quaker school headquartered at 375 Pearl Street in Downtown Brooklyn, will move its upper school to a new 45,000-square-foot space being designed by FXFOWLE architects at the center, located at 116 Lawrence Street. [more]

New York University’s new videogame development institute has inked a deal for space in Downtown Brooklyn, a big boost for the area’s efforts to attract trendy technology clients, the Wall Street Journal reported. [more]

From the December issue: Mayor Ed Koch and other city officials unveiled an agreement with Forest City Enterprises and the Polytechnical Institute of New York to build a $340 million office, retail and research complex in Downtown Brooklyn 28 years ago this month. The City Hall announcement identified Cleveland-based Forest City as the main developer for the MetroTech Center project, which received a 99-year lease and 22 years of tax abatements as part of the deal. In addition, Polytechnical was selected to build a $12.4 million library. [more]

In a move that may foreshadow a long awaited change in the Downtown Brooklyn office leasing climate, the neighborhood just signed its first technology tenant, the Wall Street Journal reported. MakerBot, a startup that makes three-dimensional printers, has signed a lease for the entire 21st floor of One MetroTech. [more]

The Brooklyner building (tall and center) in the area surrounging the MetroTech

There is a residential “boomlet,” happening around Downtown Brooklyn’s MetroTech Center, the New York Post reported.Despite the lack of amenities, high-rises in the area are offering amazing views at affordable rents, the Post said.

“We’re kind of a 10-minute walk to everything — in the middle of nowhere,” said Janice Behrens, who lives at Belltel Lofts, at 365 Bridge Street near Willoughby Street. [more]

Deutsche Bank, the Frankfurt-based investment and financial services institution, will take 50,000 square feet of space at 4 MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, the New York Observer reported.

The bank will house its operations and other less-than-vital staff at the building, owned by JPMorgan Chase, which was chosen for its proximity to Deutsche’s Financial District office, at 60 Wall Street.

From left: The entrance to Eurohyop’s NYC offices and 9 MetroTech Center (building credit: PropertyShark)As European banks mitigate risk amid the debt crisis that’s consumed the continent, many have stopped lending for commercial real estate projects in the U.S., Reuters reported. The total amount of money European banks loaned to the sector has fallen by 31 percent in the last two years, according to Trepp, and more banks have announced they would reduce U.S. property loans.

While European real estate lending is not widespread in much of the United States, it is crucial in big cities like New York. Forest City Ratner was directly affected by this trend in October, when German bank Eurohypo suddenly dropped out of serious negotiations to provide a $65 million loan for 9 MetroTech in Brooklyn. … [more]

Forest City Enterprises, developer of the Barclay’sCenter at Atlantic Yards, reported third-quarter losses of $41.9million, or 25 cents per share, according to a report fromInternational Business Times. Leasing difficulties at a Florida mall and disposition of an office building in Cleveland were cited as main reasons for the third quarter net loss.The company saw $4.3 million in losses from vacancies in two Brooklynoffice properties, $4 millionin write-offs from stalled development projects, and $3.3 million in lossesfrom slower-than-expected leasing at 8 Spruce Street, the FrankGehry-designed residential tower. The company said it hasleased 550 of 903 apartments in the building. … [more]

Fitch Ratings downgraded a $6.6 million class of commercial real estate loans led by 10 Metrotech Center, a seven-story office building owned by Forest City Ratner in Downtown Brooklyn.

Fitch downgraded one class of COMM Mortgage Trust 2005-FL-10, saying 42 percent of the pool is expected to default due a 10 percent overall decline in cash flow compared with the last update.

The 359,000 square foot property, located at 625 Fulton Street in Brooklyn, is faced with an expiring lease with the Internal Revenue Service, which occupies nearly 88 percent of the building. The loan represents 7.4 percent of the pool balance. … [more]

While the battle for New York University’s growth within Greenwich Village wages on, the school quietly took two significant steps towards completing the majority of its expansion, which is taking place outside of the core campus. The university chose EYP Architecture & Engineering and Kohn, Pedersen, Fox Associates to design a new building that will house the College of Nursing, the College of Dentistry, and a new bioengineering program. The 170,000-square-foot structure will rise along NYU’s existing First Avenue campus that extends from 24th to 34th streets, at 433 First Avenue near 26th Street. Meanwhile, NYU’s engineering affiliate, the Polytechnic Institute of New York University, will expand into 120,000 square feet of space at Forest City Ratner’s MetroTech Center in Brooklyn. TRD … [more]

Panasonic has signed on to move its corporate North American headquarters to Newark, taking advantage of $102.4 million in state subsidies and rebuffing efforts by New York City officials to lure the company to Downtown Brooklyn, according to Crain’s. The subsidy package requires Panasonic, which is currently housed in Secaucus, to add 250 employees to the 950 it already has in the state over the next 10 years. New Jersey has been aggressively pursuing big tenants through the promise of tax incentives in recent months, among them, the city’s Hunts Point produce market. … [more]

Downtown Brooklyn is showing no signs of ceding its title as the city’s fastest-growing neighborhood, even though shopping and public services have yet to catch up with residential development, the Post reported. According to new data from the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership, there are now 12,000 residents of DoBro’s 16-block core, including the Fulton Mall, MetroTech complex and the Jay and Willoughby street corridors, up 50 percent from just one year ago. And the neighborhood is barely recognizable as its decade-ago self, when it had a mere 400 residents and a streetscape peppered with 99-cent stores. … [more]

From left: 478 Third Avenue in Manhattan (source: PropertyShark) and 10 Metrotech Center in Brooklyn

The volume of delinquent commercial mortgage-backed securities in the U.S. rose to a staggering $61.4 billion last month, pegging the delinquency rate at a record-high 9.34 percent, according to a new report from real estate analytics firm Trepp. “While the rate continues to head higher, optimists can point to the fact that the rate of increase is significantly smaller than it was in the prior two months,” said Manus Clancy, managing director at Trepp. “Pessimists can counter that the jump comes despite the fact that new issues continue to make their way into the calculation and servicers continue to resolve troubled loans.”After all but disappearing in the aftermath of the real estate crash, the CMBS market has already begun to rebound, with, by Trepp’s count, $12.7 billion in issues in 2010. Moody’s Investors Service recently projected that figure would rise to $37 billion this year. The Real Deal chronicled the reincarnation of the nation’s CMBS market in the January print magazine.

But in New York City, those fresh CMBS issues don’t appear to have made a dent in the delinquency rate yet. … [more]

Panasonic’s North America unit is mulling a move from New Jersey to Downtown Brooklyn despite the promise of over $100 million in tax credits if the company were to stay within the state, the Wall Street Journal reported. Among the locations on its radar: MetroTech Center and Atlantic Yards. Panasonic, whose U.S. operations are currently headquartered in Secaucus, was approved for up to $102.4 million in tax breaks by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority this week if it relocates to Newark instead of New York City. … [more]

Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for the first time have madeTrepp’s list of defaulted properties that are 60 or more daysdelinquent, the commercial loan tracking firm Trepp said. The110-building Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which spans First Avenue to Avenue C, and 14th to 23rd streets, made the top of the listof New York City’s commercial defaulted properties for the month ofMarch, with a total balance of $3 billion in commercial-mortgage backedloans. (See full list of delinquent properties — and zoom in on them — in chart here, plus see a slide show of 10 of the properties above.) With Stuy Town at the top of the list, Riverton Apartments, the dozen 13-story buildings that lie between 135th and 138th streets and Fifth Avenue and Harlem River Drive, was bumped down to the second spot out of 46 such properties from last month’s list, of 41 properties (click here to see the list of February delinquencies). One property that made if off last month’s list is Vornado Realty Trust’s 50 West 57th Street. After five months with a special servicer, the $29 million loan payments for 50 West 57th Street were made up to date March 1. They are now current and therefore off the list, but still with a special servicer, according to Trepp. TRD … [more]

The city Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications is seeking to lease 85,000 square feet in a Class A office building in Downtown Brooklyn, a recent city filing shows.

A separate city agency filed a land use application last month on behalf of DoITT, to win approval for the tech division to lease space in 2 Metrotech Center (note: correction appended), records published by the Department of City Planning this month show.

The application, received Jan. 27, is seeking to “consolidate and relocate two DoITT offices,” in the 457,966-square-foot building, the filing says.

The agency has been under scrutiny for its problem-plagued overhaul of the city’s emergency 911 system, and its commissioner retired at the end of the year. The application, made by the agency that manages city properties known as the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, does not provide specific information such as which floors would be occupied. … [more]